The Schooldays of Jesus (14 page)

‘Yes.'

‘Until then, I don't want you to see Dmitri in private. Do you understand? Do you understand what I am saying?'

The boy is silent, refuses to meet his gaze.

‘David, do you understand what I am saying? This is a serious matter. You don't know Dmitri. You don't know why he takes you into his confidence. You don't know what is going on in his heart.'

‘He was crying. I saw him. He was hiding in the closet and crying.'

‘Which closet?'

‘The closet with the brooms and stuff.'

‘Did he tell you why he was crying?'

‘No.'

‘Well, when there is something weighing on our heart it often does us good to cry. There is probably something weighing on Dmitri's heart, and now that he has cried his heart is less burdened. I'll talk to him. I'll find out what is wrong. I'll get to the bottom of it.'

CHAPTER 11

HE IS as good as his word. On Monday morning, after delivering David to his class, he seeks out Dmitri. He finds him in one of the exhibition rooms, standing on a chair, using a long feather duster to dust a framed painting high on the wall. The painting shows a man and a woman dressed rather formally in black sitting on a lawn in sylvan surroundings, with a picnic cloth spread before them, while in the background a herd of cattle graze peacefully.

‘Do you have a moment, Dmitri?' he says.

Dmitri descends and faces him.

‘David tells me that you have been inviting children from the Academy into your room. He also tells me you have been showing him pictures of naked women. If this is true, I want you to put a stop to it at once. Otherwise there will be serious consequences for you, which I don't need to spell out. Do you understand me?'

Dmitri tilts his cap back. ‘You think I am violating these children's pretty young bodies? Is that what you are accusing me of?'

‘I am not accusing you of anything. I am sure your relations
with the children are entirely blameless. But children imagine things, they exaggerate things, they talk among themselves, they talk to their parents. The whole business could turn nasty. Surely you see that.'

A young couple wander into the exhibition room, the first visitors of the day. Dmitri returns the chair to its proper place in a corner, then sits down on it, holding the feather duster erect like a spear. ‘Entirely blameless,' he says in a low voice. ‘You say that to my face:
entirely blameless
? Surely you joke, Simón. Is that your name: Simón?'

The young couple cast them a glance, whisper together, leave the room.

‘Next year, Simón, I will celebrate my forty-fifth year in this life. Yesterday I was a stripling and today, in the blink of an eye, I am forty-four, with whiskers and a big belly and a bad knee and everything else that goes with being forty-four. Do you really believe that one can reach such an advanced age and still be
entirely blameless
? Would you say that of yourself? Are you entirely blameless?'

‘Please, Dmitri, no speeches. I came to make a request, a polite request. Stop inviting children from the Academy into your room. Stop showing them dirty pictures. Also, stop talking to them about their teacher, señora Arroyo, and your feelings for her. They don't understand.'

‘And if I don't stop?'

‘If you don't stop I will report you to the museum authorities and you will lose your job. It is as simple as that.'

‘As simple as that…Nothing in this life is simple, Simón—you
ought to know that. Let me tell you about this job of mine. Before I came to the museum I worked in the hospital. Not as a doctor, I hasten to say, I was always the stupid one, never passed my exams, no good at book learning. Dmitri the dumb ox. No, I wasn't a doctor, I was an orderly, doing the jobs no one else wanted to do. For seven years, on and off, I was a hospital orderly. I told you about it already, if you remember. I don't regret those years. I saw a lot of life, a lot of life and a lot of death. So much death that in the end I had to walk away, couldn't face it anymore. I took this job instead, where there is nothing to do but sit around all day, yawning, waiting for the bell to ring for closing time. If it wasn't for the Academy upstairs, if it wasn't for Ana Magdalena, I would have perished long ago of boredom.

‘Why do you think I chat to your little boy, Simón, and to other little ones? Why do you think I play games with them and buy them sweets? Is it because I want to corrupt them? Is it because I want to violate them? No. Believe it or not, I play with them in the hope that some of that fragrance and innocence of theirs will rub off on me, so that I won't turn into a sullen, lonely old man sitting in a corner like a spider, no good to anyone, superfluous, undesired. Because what good am I by myself, and what good are you by yourself—yes, you, Simón!—what good are we by ourselves, tired, used-up old men like us? We might as well lock ourselves in the lavatory and put a bullet through our heads. Don't you agree?'

‘Forty-four isn't old, Dmitri. You are in the prime of life. You don't need to haunt the corridors of the Arroyos' dance academy. You could get married, you could have children of your own.'

‘I could. I could indeed. You think I don't want to? But there
is a catch, Simón, there is a catch. The catch is señora Arroyo. I am
encaprichado
with her. Are you familiar with the word? No? You will find it in books. Infatuated. You know it, she knows it, everyone knows it, it is no secret. Even señor Arroyo knows, whose head is up in the clouds most of the time. I am infatuated with señora Arroyo, crazy about her,
loco
, that is the beginning and the end of it. You say,
Give her up, look elsewhere
. But I won't. I am too stupid to do that—too stupid, too simple-minded, too old-fashioned, too faithful. Like a dog. I am not ashamed to say it. I am Ana Magdalena's dog. I lick the ground where her foot has trod. On my knees. And now you want me to abandon her, just like that, abandon her and find a replacement.
Gentleman, responsible, steady employment, no longer young, seeks respectable widow with view to marriage. Write box 123, include photograph.

‘It won't work, Simón. It is not the woman in box 123 whom I love but Ana Magdalena Arroyo. What kind of husband would I make for box 123, what kind of father, as long as I bear Ana Magdalena's image in my heart? And those children you wish on me, those children of my own: do you think they will love me, children engendered from the loins of indifference? Of course not. They will hate and despise me, which will be exactly what I deserve. Who needs an absent-hearted father?

‘So thank you for your considered and considerate advice, but unfortunately I cannot follow it. When it comes to life's great choices, I follow my heart. Why? Because the heart is always right and the head is always wrong. Do you understand?'

He begins to see why David is captivated by this man. No doubt there is an element of posturing in all this talk of extravagant,
unrequited love, as well as a perverse kind of boasting. Mockery too: from the beginning he has felt he is singled out for these confidences only because Dmitri regards him as a eunuch or a moon-dweller, alien to the earthly passions. But the performance is a powerful one nonetheless. How wholehearted, how grand, how
true
Dmitri must appear to a boy of David's age, compared with a dry old stick like himself!

‘Yes, Dmitri, I understand. You make yourself clear, all too clear. Let me make myself clear too. Your relations with señora Arroyo are your business, not mine. Señora Arroyo is a grown woman, she can take care of herself. But children are a different matter. The Arroyos are running a school, not an orphanage. You cannot take over their students and adopt them into a family of your own.
They are not your children
, Dmitri, just as señora Arroyo is not your wife. I want you to stop inviting David, my child, the child for whose welfare I am responsible, into your room and showing him dirty pictures. My child or any other child. If you don't put a stop to it I will see to it that you are dismissed. That is all.'

‘A threat, Simón? Are you issuing threats?' Dmitri rises from his chair, still holding the feather duster. ‘You, a stranger from nowhere, threatening me? Do you think I have no power here?' His lips open in a smile that reveals his yellowed teeth. Lightly he shakes the feathers in his, Simón's, face. ‘Do you think I have no friends in higher places?'

He, Simón, steps back. ‘What I think is of no consequence to you,' he says coldly. ‘I have said what I had to say. Good morning.'
That night it begins to rain. It rains all day too, without interruption or promise of interruption. The bicycle messengers are unable to go out on their rounds. He stays in his room, killing time, listening to music on the radio, dozing, while water drips into a bucket from a leak in the roof.

On the third day of the rains the door to his room bursts open and David stands before him, his clothes sodden, his hair plastered to his scalp.

‘I ran away,' he announces. ‘I ran away from the Academy.'

‘You ran away from the Academy! Come, close the door, take off those wet clothes, you must be icy cold. I thought you liked it at the Academy. Has something happened?' While he talks he fusses around the boy, undressing him, wrapping him in a towel.

‘Ana Magdalena is gone. And Dmitri too. They are both gone.'

‘I'm sure there is some explanation. Do they know you are here? Does señor Arroyo know? Does Alyosha know?'

The boy shakes his head.

‘They will be worried. Let me make you something warm to drink, then I will go out and telephone to say you are safe.'

Donning his yellow oilskin and yellow mariner's cap he goes out into the downpour. From the telephone booth on the street corner he calls the Academy. There is no reply.

He returns to the room. ‘No one answers,' he says. ‘I will have to go there myself. Wait for me here. Please, please don't run away.'

This time he goes by bicycle. It takes him fifteen minutes, through the downpour. He arrives drenched to the bone. The studio is empty, but in the cavernous dining hall he finds David's comrades the boarders seated at one of the long tables with Alyosha
reading to them. Alyosha breaks off and stares at him inquiringly.

‘I am sorry to interrupt,' he says. ‘I telephoned but there was no reply. I have come to tell you that David is safe. He is at home with me.'

Alyosha blushes. ‘I'm sorry. I have been trying to keep everyone together, but sometimes I lose track. I thought he was upstairs.'

‘No, he is with me. He said something about Ana Magdalena being gone.'

‘Yes, Ana Magdalena is away. We are having a break from classes until she comes back.'

‘And when will that be?'

Alyosha shrugs helplessly.

He pedals back to the cottage. ‘Alyosha says they are having a break from classes,' he tells the boy. ‘He says Ana Magdalena will be back soon. She hasn't run away at all. That is just a nonsense story.'

‘It is not nonsense. Ana Magdalena has run away with Dmitri. They are going to be gypsies.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘Dmitri.'

‘Dmitri is a dreamer. He has always dreamed of running away with Ana Magdalena. Ana Magdalena has no interest in him.'

‘You never listen to me! They have run away. They are going to have a new life. I don't want to go back to the Academy. I want to go with Ana Magdalena and Dmitri.'

‘You want to leave Inés and be with Ana Magdalena?'

‘Ana Magdalena loves me. Dmitri loves me. Inés doesn't love me.'

‘Of course Inés loves you! She can't wait to get back from Novilla so that she can be with you again. As for Dmitri, he doesn't love anyone. He is incapable of love.'

‘He loves Ana Magdalena.'

‘He has a passion for Ana Magdalena. That's a different thing. Passion is selfish. Love is unselfish. Inés loves you in an unselfish way. So do I.'

‘It's boring being with Inés. It's boring being with you. When is it going to stop raining? I hate the rain.'

‘I am sorry to hear you are so bored. As for the rain, I am unfortunately not the emperor of the heavens, so there is nothing I can do to stop it.'

Estrella has two radio stations. He switches to the second station just as the announcer is reporting the closure of the agricultural fair on account of the ‘unseasonable' weather. That news is followed by a long recital of bus services that have been curtailed, and of schools that are suspending classes. ‘Estrella's two academies will be closing their gates too, the Academy of Singing and the Academy of Dance.'

‘I told you,' says the boy. ‘I am never going back to the Academy. I hate it there.'

‘A month ago you loved the Academy. Now you hate it. Maybe, David, it is time for you to learn that there are not only two feelings you can have, love and hate, that there are many other feelings too. If you decide to hate the Academy and turn your back on it, you will soon find yourself in one of the public schools, where your teachers won't read you stories about genies and elephants but make you do sums all day, sixty-three divided by nine, seventy-two
divided by six. You are a lucky boy, David, lucky and much indulged. I think you should wake up to that fact.'

Having said his say, he goes out in the rain and calls the Academy. This time Alyosha picks up the telephone. ‘Alyosha! It is Simón again. I have just heard on the radio that the Academy is going to be closed until the rain stops. Why didn't you tell me? Let me speak to señor Arroyo.'

A long silence. Then: ‘Señor Arroyo is busy, he can't come to the telephone.'

‘Señor Arroyo, the director of your Academy, is too busy to speak to parents. Señora Arroyo has abandoned her duties and cannot be found. What is going on?'

Silence. From outside the booth a young woman casts him an exasperated look, mouths words, taps her wristwatch. She has an umbrella, but it is flimsy, no proof against the squalls of rain that sweep down on her.